8 Ways to Use Excel in Your Business

If you’re a savvy business owner, you know that investing in the right skills is the way to move your business forward –but it’s hard to know which skills are worth learning versus which are best outsourced to another person.

Learning how to use Excel is one of those skills business owners are better off knowing –with the right online Excel training, you can take advantage of the tool’s robust features.

Learning Excel will help you figure out what you’re looking for when hiring, too.

To give you an idea, here are some ways you can use Excel for your business.

1. Accounting

Millions of businesses use Excel for their accounting from tracking expenses to budget planning, and creating financial reports. It’s made easy thanks to the software’s formula features which let you compute data in bulk.

The best part is their selection of spreadsheet templates that allow you to display data beautifully.

2. Storing Data

Excel is a great medium to store customer information or collect analytics for your website because it can be integrated with third-party software.

Excel spreadsheets can pull in data from other sources and provide a “living document”, akin to a dashboard –providing an “always on” look into your company data.

3. Analyze Data

Are you trying to estimate profits and losses for this quarter? Looking for trends in your business? Or forecast sales for next year?

It’s hard to come to make business decisions by looking at a bunch of numbers. Thankfully, Excel makes it easier with the help of pivot tables.

4. Inventory Tracking

If you’re working with thousands of products coming from different distributors, Excel can help you keep track of all of that in a single spreadsheet. And because Excel is available online with Microsoft Office 365, you, your employees, or even your website can make AD HOC changes every time there’s a change in the supply.

5. Reporting

Whether it’s balance sheets, sales reports, or web analytics, Excel lets you put all that hard data into one data visualization that you can present at meetings and evaluations.

Creating data visualizations within Excel is a snap with prefabricated design formats so you don’t need to start from scratch. Just pick a design to go along with your data and customize the colors and fonts for maximum visual appeal.

6. Preventing Errors

Think of Excel as one giant calculator that allows users to build in levels of access and safeguards to prevent mishaps. When leveraged to it’s fullest, Excel is a brilliant tool that does much of the heavy lifting for you. Its ability to do both basic and arithmetic computations automatically helps you save time and avoid costly errors.

7. Goal Tracking

Keep your team members accountable with a spreadsheet which outlines the company’s goals.

The beauty of Excel is that you’re not just limited to computations. You can add text describing the goal and the steps each member has to take to achieve it. Tick off every item that gets accomplished until you reach the finish line.

8. Scheduling

Excel lets you create calendars and GANTT charts that you can use for different purposes whether it’s mapping out your website’s content schedule, your employees weekly tasks, or a yearly evaluations of your business performance.

You can then share these worksheets with everyone involved so everyone is on the same page.

How Do You Use Excel?

We’re just scratching the surface here. Even the most proficient users have yet to discover its most advanced features.

If you don’t know how to use Excel, now is the perfect time to learn it. It’s a powerful tool small businesses owners can use to perform a variety of tasks that help bring them closer to their goals.

What other ways have you used Excel for your business? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Lisa Besserman, Founder and CEO of Startup Buenos Aires, has been named as Business Insider’s “Top 100 Most Influential Women in Tech”, and the 2014 “Business Innovator of Latin America” by the Council of the Americas.
Lisa moved to Buenos Aires from New York City to create Startup Buenos Aires, the organization that represents the startup, tech and entrepreneurial community of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Startup Buenos Aires has been one of the main catalysts for strengthening the tech ecosystem in Latin America, by bringing global startup initiatives, development projects and investment opportunities to the region.
Under Lisa’s leadership Startup Buenos Aires has been credited as “Top 3 Growing Startup Cities” by CNBC and “5 Emerging Global Tech Hubs” by Entrepreneur Magazine.